


Of Hands and Fingers

by keeponshouting



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Established Relationship, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Police Brutality, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 10:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeponshouting/pseuds/keeponshouting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s just their hands together.  It’s just their hands because, most days, that’s all he needs.  He sits there, on the floor, leaning back against the leg of the table, hugs his wine or his whiskey and twines their fingers together, and Enjolras goes about his business as if it’s nothing, as if it is not some tremendous inconvenience to always be one-handed because of the disease known as Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Hands and Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot describe how painful this actually was to write. Just hope it's at all what my recipient was looking for.

It’s just their hands together.  It’s just their hands because, most days, that’s all he needs.  He sits there, on the floor, leaning back against the leg of the table, hugs his wine or his whiskey and twines their fingers together, and Enjolras goes about his business as if it’s nothing, as if it is not some tremendous inconvenience to always be one-handed because of the disease known as Grantaire.  It’s an illness that would be just as satisfied to claim a leg instead, as little contact as a head pillowed upon a foot, but Enjolras offers his hand every time and there is no denying it.  His sickness will always kiss those pale and battle-scarred knuckles, though it would willingly settle for kissing his boots.

When R was still an artist, or even tried to be, they would sometimes work at the kitchen table together, sat side-by side or angled around one corner with their hands clasped or fingers idly playing against one another between a mess of books and notes, papers and paint stains.  It was, at least for Grantaire, an unexpectedly kind twist of fate that he worked best with his left hand while Enjolras wrote with his right.  The moment Grantaire had realized that Enjolras more often put his pen down than moved his offered hand away, consciously interrupted his own work rather than breaking contact in order to reach for his tea or coffee, something beyond fate had seemingly intervened.  Neither of them had got much more work done that day.

Now, however, there are no paints, no pencils, no charcoal smudges or spots of ink.  Grantaire never creates anymore, only destroys.  When the urge comes upon him, he finds another bottle.  At least then, when it becomes too much to bear and he lets himself scratch the horrors of his mind onto the backs of unpaid bills and unopened envelopes with a half-dried ballpoint or faded marker, he doesn’t think twice before throwing them away and can’t half understand the tangles of lines come morning anyway.

Those are the times when their hands aren’t always enough.  When he wakes from the dead state of his drunken slumber, fingers stained and ghosts of lines transferred in reverse upon his cheek, he stumbles to his feet in search of the bedroom and always finds it dark, save for the glow of the clock, proclaiming some wee hour of the morning.  He climbs over the blankets, never in between the sheets, and curls himself against the solid plane of Enjolras’s back, feeling through the thin barrier for the minute shifting of dreaming muscles, the faint expansion and contraction of lungs trapped behind ribs.  With each breath of his own, Grantaire tries to focus his dulled senses, to recall the way it should feel, the way it should smell, the rhythm of his heartbeat, the mingling scents of shampoo and soap and aftershave.  Each inhale is righteous passion; each exhale is fury.

Then Grantaire wakes up, alone and screaming.

He never dreams anymore, only remembers, and those apparitions leave him sweat-soaked and stumbling through his tears.  Nightmare memories become nightmare visions.  This is not his flat, it is a city street.  The shower curtain is a locked doorway; the cold tile is hot asphalt.  His vomit it so much blood.

It is not a peaceful protest and they never meant it to be.  Peace they have tried and peace has failed and they have all agreed that it is time for some greater action.  No, this is not a peaceful protest.  This is a riot.  Not a single one of them expects to leave these streets unharmed and not a single one of those violent expectations will be disappointed.

The strikes against them come from various points all at once, an organized attack in a well-practiced fashion.  Lines of helmets and armor and shields make each enemy indistinguishable from the next.  Clouds of tear gas envelope entire pockets of demonstrators, a tactic ostensibly meant to disperse them, even as the faceless guard leaves them with nowhere to go.  They are physically engaged in an instant.  This is not their first battle with their current foe.

No amount of time in the boxing ring or fencing strip can prepare a man for these things.  Not even a history of bar brawls compares to facing a line of combatants such as these.  He takes a blow to the head and the world is spinning but suddenly Enjolras is there to make it stand still.  In any combination, his friends are a more formidable force than any one of them left alone.  Together, they break the line and let the people free.  It feels almost too easy.

Then there is blood and he can see it, bright and red and leaking from under damp strands of blond hair and he knows that this lull, this give, is merely the eye of the storm.  There is blood and he shouts, voice swallowed in the din as he tries in vain to extricate himself from his opponent.  There is blood and he feels more than sees Enjolras fall to the ground.  There is blood and shots are fired and he is lost in a human stampede.  There is blood and no one is watching their feet.

The rest comes back to him sometimes in a blur and sometimes in vivid detail.  He fights the crowd rather than the police.  He zeroes in on the body, beaten and trampled, with tunnel vision and a static roar in his ears to wash everything else away.  He hits his knees hard on the pavement, can’t even feel the scrape that tears both denim and skin.  He knows better and yet pulling the body up, clinging to it, is all that he can do to protect it.  He does not think about the fact that he can’t feel the man breathing.  He does not consider the shallow stutter of a failing heart.  He simply curls in like he is the one dying, tries to will his own life force out of his useless shell and into that broken body, and murmurs quiet, desperate nonsense as he lets the tears fall.

So it’s just their hands together.  It’s just their hands because, most days, that’s all he needs.  He clings to the memory of those fingers more tightly than he clings to his drink and pays no mind when his bottle tips and leaves its contents pooled beneath him on the kitchen floor.  Nothing, not even death, will make him let go.


End file.
